


only blacks

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous Route, Angst, Blood of the Eagle and Lion, Character Death, Drabble, Gen, One-Shot, Post Time-Skip Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 23:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21400591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: war possessed many colors ignatz wanted to never see.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	only blacks

In scripture, gods and saints walked among men to help cleanse the sins of the darkness that lurked in even the most noble human hearts. Saint Seiros drove her blade into Nemesis, the King of Liberation, and she helped bring about a new age for man. During his youth, Ignatz wondered why the saints and gods no longer walked with man hand-in-hand, why they would not look upon their own canvas in admiration of their own work, why they all but vanished into the heavens above.

Now, as the fog lifted and the blood spilled upon earth’s muddied fields, he understood: the gods no longer yearned to face the infernal darkness bubbling deep beneath the skin and muscles and sinew of their once-beloved creations. 

Spiraling smoke towered into the skies above climbing ever higher like a prayer whispered between clenched teeth to the stars. Charcoaled corpses, comprised of Imperial, Kingdom, and Alliance forces, piled upon another atop the burning hill, the stench putrid, the sight ghastly. His sword purged into another man’s chest, adding another offering to the demons of war. Cracks like spiderwebs spread across his glasses. Calluses shaped in crescents covered his once-timid hands.

To become a knight, his father said, requires the strength not of a thousand men, but rather the heart to bear witness to their slaughter from your blade.

_I believe that you, Ignatz Victor, have that heart._

(He did not. He could not. He would not.)

_Ba-bum,_ beat the organ caged in a confined and cracking jail cell, _ba-bum._ The sword broke upon impact of the Imperial soldier’s platemail, the splintered tip hurling into the air and landing beside the carcass of what remained of an old friend. An enemy’s axe raised. An arrow notched. Down came the guillotine - _Off with the Empress’s head!_ cried the maddened leader of a fallen kingdom - that snapped the bow in two, but mere moments too late. 

(He did.)

The broken weapon and the body toppled to the ground with a _thud,_ and he picked up another bow from the cooling hands of a faceless man whose family probably held hope he’d make it another day. 

(He _did._)

Grime smeared upon his face as he wiped the sweat off his brow. All three armies struggled to maintain momentum, their losses rising pitably with no end in sight.

Who was winning?

No one, he surmised, taking temporary shelter in the forests. Not one person. He tore his tattered cloak and wrapped the fabric tight around his bleeding bicep, which throbbed and tingled from pulling a bowstring taut far too many times. He hissed and whimpered upon poking the wound. Lysithea wasn’t within range to mend him, he would have to make do.

And then, he exchanged gazes with a demon.

A pale imitation of a man lurched and growled forward, beastly furs of blacks and whites stained from those he had slain. Matted blonde hair swayed with each formidable step, twigs and rock breaking beneath his heels. A lance bleached red glowed with anticipation, pulsing, and Ignatz felt his own race. This way. He was coming this way, lone, frenzied eye narrowed at its prey.

“Stay back,” Ignatz warned, fingers threading the feathered fletching. “Please.”

The demon faltered, then _laughed, _a bellowing, throaty gurgle of what _could_ be a laugh, before teetering backward. His head jerked to the side as he suddenly grew still, and the air, tainted with fire and ash, became cold.

Then.

A hair’s breadth away, and Ignatz could smell the demon’s breath upon his face, panted in huffs. The lance impaled Ignatz into the tree he once considered a haven even with its leaves not fully bloomed in the early spring. His eyes widened, stare meeting Death’s, before shifting to the three arrows lodged in the demon armor’s weak spots. He did that. _He._ The training with Shamir, with Leonie, with Professor - perhaps it wasn’t entirely for naught, even if most of it was simply that. A waste. 

The spear pulled out, wood splinters of the tree and blood spilling from his egregious wound, and Ignatz - _You’re so quiet half the time, _said Raphael, _I barely even notice you’re around!_ \- screamed, and screamed, and cried, and watched while slumping to his side the demon all but turn toward the field with yet another tally on his freightful murder regime. Ignatz’s resistance meant nothing to a beast possessed by bloodlust. The bow clattered beside him, useless to a dying man, and the arrows scattered around his body like funeral flowers.

(He didn’t.)

_What a beautiful color,_ a frightful thought cooed, tickling the morbid portion of his quieting mind, _that red would look lovely watered down a bit._

His glasses slipped off his face, vision blurring to only splotches of objects. Squiggly lines for trees. Straight lines for grass. Circular blobs for drifting leaves. An unfamiliar world that teetered and turned as he rolled onto his back, splayed out for the gods to see another of their disappointing creations perish for a terrible meaninglessness.

The sky was so blue.

He wondered if heaven was, too. Blue. Like Marianne’s hair. Like the demon’s eye.

Sothis shook Her head in the last fleeting moments of his consciousness while his eyelids slipped shut.

“It isn’t,” She said, stroking his damp bangs with Her gentle, ethereal fingers. Her brow knitted together while a pained smile flitted across Her face.

“Only blacks.”


End file.
